Miss That Old Backstreet Boys Album? Amazon Will Revive It Digitally

If you buy a Backstreet Boys album from Amazon.com — or any popular album from the past 15 years — the company’s AutoRip service will download digital versions of the songs for free.

Amazon.com Inc. announced a service that will automatically download digital versions of many compact disc purchases to its cloud player for free, and will mine its customers’ purchase history all the way back to 1998 to ensure no CD bought on its website doesn’t have a digital twin.

The company said the service –dubbed AutoRip – applies to the 50,000 most popular albums of the past 15 years, including CDs from the largest three record labels. The service is automatic for customers using Amazon’s cloud player, which stores digital music remotely to be played across a variety of devices.

“CDs were the second category – after books – that Amazon carried,” said a spokeswoman. “We’ve sold hundreds of millions of CDs to tens of millions of customers.”

AutoRip may help Amazon goose interest in its cloud player service, which competes with Apple Inc.’s popular iTunes in the Cloud service. Amazon’s cloud player is free for customers who download 250 songs or fewer and costs $24.99 annually for up to 250,000 downloads.

The spokeswoman said AutoRip applies automatically to all customers who have a cloud player account and there’s no opt-out. Amazon said the downloads wouldn’t trip the annual fee, even if they exceed 250.

CD sales could use a boost. U.S. CD album sales fell by 14% last year to 193 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That compares with overall album sales in the period, including CDs, digitally downloaded albums, cassettes and LPs, which dropped less than 1%.

Seattle-based Amazon noted that in some cases a CD on its site costs less than its digital equivalent. For instance, the physical version of Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream” album recently was $9.99, compared with $10.99 for the MP3 version.